Free Three Story House: A Novel by Courtney Miller Santo Page A

left, he pressed his card into Lizzie’s hand, urging her to call him if they ran into any further problems.
    Elyse came in the back door. “I saw them leave,” she said, before looking at Lizzie. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
    Lizzie pulled self-consciously at the satin dress, getting a scent of mothballs as she did so. “It’s too much to explain. We got lucky, though.”
    “I didn’t even notice the fox,” Isobel said, reaching for the shrug, which had been dropped on the table and then hugged it to her chest before responding to Lizzie’s earlier comment. “That’s because he liked you.”
    “Hardly,” Lizzie said, pulling her hair out of its ponytail. “You’re the one they kept their eyes on.”
    “She’s right,” Elyse said. “You’ve got a vulnerability right now that’s working for you. In fact, I’ve never seen it in you before. You’ve always been so damn self-sufficient that a man can’t fathom how he fits into your life.”
    “So, the way to find a man is to fall on your ass in front of him?”
    “Not all men, some men. Men like T. J. are providers by nature. You’ve mostly dated takers.” Too often, Elyse’s assessment of the cousins proved uncomfortably accurate.
    “Let’s not talk about it.” Lizzie gathered the memorabilia she’d been absorbed in earlier that day, dumping the whole lot of clothing into the give-away pile. Isobel helped, stacking photographs into tidy piles.
    “Your grandmother was a hottie,” Elyse said, thumbing through several postage-stamp-sized pictures. “She’s got that thing where you don’t want to look away.”
    “Charisma,” Lizzie said, putting the last of the pictures back in the trunk.
    Isobel buttoned the fox around her shoulders. “Can I keep this?”
    Lizzie nodded. “I was planning to dump all this stuff at Goodwill.”
    “Let me ask you something.” Isobel leaned close. “What’s the plan here? If I learned anything today, it’s that we need to be serious with this. Do we have enough money in your grandmother’s trust to hire someone to work on this place?”
    Elyse interrupted. “What do your parents have to say about this mess? I mean, it really is their mess when it comes right down to it.”
    “What Mellie left should be enough—especially if I have the two of you helping with the stuff we can do. But when the money’s gone, it’s gone. You know how my parents are about debt.”
    “They still think credit cards are the sign of Satan?” Isobel asked.
    “They’re not that bad. I can’t ask them for money—not after all the sacrifices they’ve already made so I could play.” One of the guilt trips that Lizzie’s mother often laid on her was what it had cost the family to support her in soccer. They’d added it up one time and it totalled nearly fifty thousand dollars when they took into account fees and travel. “And I had this idea that if I do this, then my mother will finally owe me something.”
    “They really sold their house and used that money to pay for this mission?” Elyse asked.
    “Called of God is called of God,” Lizzie said, echoing what her mother always said. “I don’t have any money either, I mean not really. They don’t pay you to play soccer—at least not anymore.”
    “Let me at least pay rent,” Isobel said.
    “I’ve been thinking about getting a job,” Elyse said. “I could use the distraction.”
    Lizzie argued with Isobel. “We talked about this. Doing what you’re doing—taking charge of the stuff I don’t know about is enough. When we really get into the fixing stuff, then you’ll have to earn your keep—you know, look over the shoulder of whoever I hire to do this stuff and make sure he’s not cheating us.”
    “You got someone in mind?” Isobel backed down, and Elyse followed her lead.
    She nodded. In the last conversation she’d had with her parents, her mother had suggested a man she went to high school with who’d worked on the house over the